After sitting dutifully through this monstrous melange of mindlessness and crassness, I am convinced the medley of lobotomized mayhem — a sort of Animal without the sass, the impunity, basic intelligence and Ranbir Kapoor — is put together by a bunch of blind dimwits. Blind… Because they cannot see the script for what it is: mentally challenged. Dimwitted… Because….well…Badass Ravi Kumar could not be considered the handiwork of normal sensible minds.
It takes herculean efforts to make a film so terrible that you just keep watching to see how much worse it gets.
It is neither self-referential enough to be considered a spoof on the formalistic conventions of Hindi mainstream cinema of the 1970s nor “cool” enough to be designated a cartoon strip in motion picture format.
It is, to use some unparliamentary language, as fuck-all as cinema can be. Perhaps I am only saying that Himesh Reshammiya has the right to indulge himself first as a singer and then as an actor, when in fact, he is not much of either. As expected, he ‘sings’ his way through numerous nasal numbers, some of which have him dancing with Sunny Leone.
Ms. Leone plays a character named Nisha, who dies midway and then resurfaces at the climax for a protracted song-and-dance presentation that goes from being a disco-thumping eyesore to a cacophonic Qawwali to some Sufiana concoction. At the end of it, I felt as battered as the fishermen in the turbulent waters of Thandel.
The other major female character is Laila, played gratingly by Kirti Kulhari. Laila is a terrible person: She has short hair, shows thigh and cleavage, smokes, and when all fails, slithers up and down Prabhu Deva, hoping things will get hard for him.
Ironically, Himesh does all the dancing while Indian cinema’s most expert dancer prances around mouthing the absurdest limericks on this side of psychedelia. Everyone seems to be high on banned drugs.
Weirdly, everyone speaks in rhyme, which is not a crime. But the lines are so cheesy they feel greasy.
Himesh, who thinks his fans love him, would be a bit embarrassed to know that there were only seven people in the theatre this evening, and four of them were with me. Where were the ostensible lakhs of people who had reportedly bought the tickets in advance booking? What are we doing to the movie experience and to the box office by putting up seriously fudged numbers, pretending that the vile product is a sell-out when there is only a a trickle of spectators inside, and paying for reviews that are sinfully orchestrated ….
Most important of all, how could a product as putrid and mortifying as Badass Ravi Kumar feature actors like Pavan Malhotra, Kirti Kulhari, Prashant Narayanan, and Prabhu Deva making a complete fool of themselves? Johnny Lever and Sanjay Mishra are meant to be impersonating the two great actors, Ashok Kumar and Pran, respectively. Lever’s Ashok Kumar lands with a thud. Mishra’s Pran is lost in translation.
The same is true of the film. Director Keith Gomes must have been briefed to make a fun retro film. He, for no fault of his, gives the longest and most punchline-free joke in the history of Hindi cinema. As for apna Himesh, his performance is lost under the long hair, beard, and aviators he wears, even in the swimming pool.
